The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains a blanket prohibition on gay male blood donors. The FDA justifies this policy because gay men, as a group, have a higher incidence of HIV-AIDS than in the general U.S. population.
There is extremely little risk that an HIV positive donor, whether male or female, gay or straight, will pass the virus through a blood donation. Blood units undergo a rigorous screening process for many blood borne pathogens. If a unit of donated blood tests positive for the AIDS virus, it is destroyed.
We petition the Obama administration to end this discriminatory policy and allow gay men to donate blood. The need is constant and the protections already in place are sufficient to protect the blood supply.